The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Have you seen Woman in Gold which has been out on DVD for a bit now? It's about an old Austrian Jew (Helen Mirren) who immigrated to America during the Holocaust and attempts to get her family's original Gustav Klimt paintings back which were stolen by the Nazis and now "belong" to a museum in Austria.
Here are a dozen plus thoughts I had while watching it...
What do you know about art restitution?
• Nothing? It's okay. I didn't either. Helen Mirren will teach us. She speaks most of her lines as if to a small child. In fact, a lot of the characters do. They're constantly explaining the movie's plot and conflicts to us. And after explaining things there's sometimes bits of dialogue like...
The review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here with their permission.
How does one act a hoarse voice? Short of screaming all night into your pillow before a key scene, as I’ve heard some actors do to simulate it, it’s not something that’s all that fakeable. This kept coming to mind watching Meryl Streep in Ricki and The Flash. Ricki Randazzo, her new aging rocker alter ego, sings/screams her lungs out all night with the house band of her local dive bar and works a demeaning low wage job all day. She doesn’t take care of herself. Ricki’s voice is hoarse for the entire movie. After admiring Streep’s dedication to nailing a character you might want to say a silent prayer or offer a symbolic lozenge for her vocal chords if they did in fact receive torturous screaming abuse behind the scenes in order to sound just this way. What did they ever do to deserve this?
Whatever it was, the sacrifice was worth it, having given us Ricki...
Here’s Murtada with casting news for three directors’ sophomore efforts after the critical success of their debuts.
Insane chemistry retread?
DAMIEN CHAZELLE While everyone is talking about Miles Teller and how maybe he was fired from La La Land, the new movie from his Whiplash (2014) director Damien Chazelle, that movie has been adding cast members. It's got a rather charming cast all told. Joining Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in lead and J.K. Simmons and Ex Machina’s Sonoya Mizuno in support, are John Legend (Selma) and Rosemarie Dewitt (Rachel Getting Married).
The movie is about an aspiring actress (Stone) and a musician (Gosling) falling in love while trying to make it in LA. Legend’s role is unknown but we assume his talents as an Oscar winning songwriter will be used in some capacity in addition to his acting. DeWitt will reportedly play Gosling’s sister. Can you spot any family resemblance?
TOM FORD Yesterday Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor Johnson were announced as the latest additions to Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals joining Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams. There were reports a few months ago that Joaquin Phoenix was being considered for a part, which we'll assume is the one Shannon has now taken. Plot details are sketchy on this one beyond the fact that it’s based on Austin Wright’s 1993 novel Tony And Susan, and it involves two interlocking stories. One story is maybe a fictional one within the other. Ford has written the script and could have veered a bit from the book. Any readers of the book that can shed some light on the plot?
Will he find someone as talented as Quvenzhane Wallis?
BENH ZEITLIN And Benh Zeitlin is finally following up Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012). Reports appeared online that he has put up a casting call for child actors to appear in his new movie Wendy. Filming will take place in Antigua and the story is about “a young girl who gets kidnapped onto a hidden ecosystem where a tribal war is raging over a form of pollen that breaks the relationship between aging and time.” Hmmm, sound similar to Beasts, no? Other reports say it's loosely based on the Peter Pan myth.
Expect to see these three intriguing projects in 2016. Have they jumped to the top of your most anticipated lists?
Gothamist the first look teaser at Martin Scorsese's new HBO series Vinyl starring Bobby Cannavale (just how many tv shows are going to be about the music business post Empire? it seems like there's at least 3 new ones on the way from reports. This, Baz's, and Lee Daniel's second). Speaking of... Coming SoonEmpire Season 2 has a teaser i09 Agent Carter's villain in seaon 2 will be Madame Masque -- and get this... they're modelling her on movie siren Hedy Lamar!
Playbill Shoshana Bean singing "The Wind Beneath My Wings" - she's starring in the pre Broadway stage musical adaptation of Beaches Yahoo "Kirsten Dunst is tired, you guys" THR What if Werner Herzog directed Ant-Man? HAHA FSR 44 Fantastic Foursomes because the Fantastic Four aren't Signs and Sirens has a mean girl astrological note to Jennifer Aniston Variety Josh Trank blames studio for Fantastic Four's abysmal reviews E! Awww, matching foot injuries for Kelly Ripa and Marc Consuelos Coming SoonBlack Mass just got a bunch of character posters Playbill talks to Mamie Gummer about working with her mother and her recent stage appearances THR What if Werner Herzog directed Ant-Man?! HAHAHA
He can lift things 100 times his body weight but what does this achieve but to increase his burden, his capacity for suffering?"
Edward Norton Once Turned Green When You Made Him Angry... He is also angry about Oscar turning green. I know I know. I did not say anything about Edward Norton's rant against the monetization of awards season at IndieWire and surely you expected me too. So here we go.
While there is definitely too much politicking / campaigning and Oscar might do well to cut off a few of its competitors at the knees with tighter rules about campaigning, do we really want to lose a great deal of the Oscar coverage in the world? Again, as a reminder, it's the only time of the year when the media pays attention to films made for adults. I believe that the media frenzy would die down if there were less money to be made. And then were would movie culture be? Superheroes, dumb comedies, franchises and summer blockbusters already hog movie culture for the rest of the year. It's nice to have four months where people think about dramas and dramedies and ambitious auteur vehicles and traditional star vehicles and such. (Some of us -- the craziest ones -- would still obsess without money to be made as we have always... but most outlets would reduce coverage on these films if there were less money in it).
That said, I do understand why actors get frustrated; It's a huge chunk of their year when they would surely rather be acting or vacationing on their private island or whatnot. But there are easy solutions to that one like not showing up at every event but picking and choosing key ones. Everyone seems too afraid to miss anything which is silly because there are only a few essentials. Everything else is like cumulative effect and going to 7 things instead of 10 won't kill people's interest in you or your film or your chances at winning gold. That's my belief at least.
Yes No Maybe So Here's the red band trailer to Deadpool. I don't have the strength for a YNMS but perhaps you do for the comments section? I think I've been burned by Ryan Reynolds too many times and anything originally born from that awful X-Men Origins Wolverine risks being inexcusable from conception but bless him/them/someone for that joke at Green Lantern's expense
I don't know quite what to make of the controversy over Miles Teller's Esquire interview other than to say "congratulations, Esquire for getting people talking."
Love the snarky tagline on the cover...
Newman? Brando? Mitchum? Nah, It's Miles Teller
Mr Teller thinks the profile is misrepresenting and his famous friends are mad about it. And yet it feels accurate based on past public douchiness. Defensive fans think the author Anne Peele is the dickish one. And, well, it does feel accurate that she went into this an angle. On the other hand maybe she came up with that angle after being presented with the evidence? Celebrity profiles aren't easy to write. I've had to rescue two interview / profiles in the past where the celebrity was not making it easy to make them look good (no I'm not sharing the names) and I'm proud of the way both pieces turned out but it might have been easier to go with a " ____ is kind of a jerk" angle.
Still, I don't think this is as damning as others do and it's a good juicy read (especially the part about getting dumped from Damien Chazelle's Whiplash follow up La La Land). And I don't think it's helping Miles to be upset about it. Stars rarely come off well when bitching about how the press presents them (think Russell Crowe / Christian Bale). A lot of male stars are, in fact, rewarded for cocky arrogance and bro personas. He's hardly an original in this regard so this won't turn people off of his talent.
Saturday, August 8, 2015 at 11:00AM 
